MCGOVERN PICKS UP MCGOVERN'S STANDARD

Published: October 16, 1983

To the Editor:

Reactions, sometimes, are more telling than actions. The reaction during the last two weeks to George McGovern's Presidential candidacy has been a case in point.

Here's one example. On the day McGovern declared his candidacy, the CBS Evening News covered the event. Dan Rather noted, first, that McGovern had run for President in 1972. The next piece of information he imparted had nothing to do with what McGovern had said. Instead, it was that in 1972 McGovern's ''nickname'' had been ''McGoo.'' On the screen appeared the words ''Nickname: McGoo.''

Few reactions to McGovern's candidacy have been quite so cheap and openly biased. But the differences among them have been only differences of degree. Newsweek reported that McGovern wants another chance to ''cavort'' in the limelight. In Boston, a reporter compared him to an adolescent trying, once too often, to gain attention by ''belching'' loudly at a social event. Others have been satisfied simply to equate George McGovern with Harold Stassen.

Why this reaction? After all, McGovern is no frivolous gadly. Not so long ago, he led the successful movement to democratize the Democratic Party. He won primary elections and the party's nomination for President.

To be sure, he lost the election. That, no doubt, is one explanation for the reaction to his present candidacy. In the degenerate state of our political culture, defeat tends to eclipse everything else. The media focus on potential for victory and ignore the quality of persons and ideas. But not always. Barry Goldwater is still treated with respect. He was a candidate of ideas. He sought to make a long-term impact on our politics. He sought to move his party to the right. Had he run a second time for President, he would have been taken seriously. What makes McGovern different is just this: He moved his party not to the right but to the left - and he seeks to move it to the left again. That, it seems to us, is reason enough to support his candidacy. In a field of chameleons - filling their grab bags with pretty much the same old programs to service the same collection of aspiring policymakers and organized interest groups - McGovern's voice and character are unique. It is said that he too is reviving ''old'' themes: the themes of the 1972 campaign. In broad outline, that is true. Once again, he alone is speaking for a fundamental reorientation of our politics toward a democratic populism at home and justice and restraint abroad. Look at it this way: Reagan picked up Goldwater's standard in the Republican Party. No one, this year, has picked up McGovern's standard in the Democratic Party. So, McGovern has done it himself. We're for him. (Prof.) RICHARD PARKER (Prof.) LEWIS SARGENTICH (Prof.) DUNCAN KENNEDY Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 6, 1983

The letter was signed also by four other Harvard Law School faculty members.